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Growing up, my Grammy made a lot of blueberry muffins, blueberry cobblers, and, occasionally, a blueberry pie. For quite a few summers in a row, one of my Uncle Mo’s good friends provided a steady supply of fresh blueberries. Grammy always froze them and we had (almost) fresh blueberry baked goods all year round. I can still easily bring to mind the smell of freshly baked blueberry goodies, no matter how they were baked.

I like to take advantage of getting them fresh, while they’re in season during the summer. Garen brought home a few boxes of blueberries from our new Kroger (which I’m currently loving) on Friday. I had initially bought them to make muffins but didn’t get to it Saturday morning so I decided to bake a pie for us instead.

As a side note, I use a lot of frozen blueberries throughout the year for baked goods and they work well too but fresh blueberries are easier than thawing out frozen ones. I’m letting my lazy-mama features shine brightly, right?!?

This Blueberry Crumble Pie with Shortbread Crust is an modified version of a recipe from Williams-Sonoma and you can find that recipe here. Below is my adapted version, which includes a fantastic shortbread crust. I honestly can’t remember exactly where the crust comes from- I think a combination of Pinterest and blog posts, plus a little bit of trial and error. Wherever it came from, it’s the one I like to use- I’m too much of a perfectionist to even attempt making a regular homemade pie crust since they always turn out looking terrible for me and it drives me bananas! If you don’t like thick crusts, this one is not for you.

This pie crust is perfectly sized for my favorite pie dish. (I’ll have to share the recipe on another post- again, lazy-mom) One of these days I’m going to splurge and get the red pie dish. I started with the white version since I’m such a matchy-matchy person and white is easier to match with other dishes if you’re taking a pie somewhere. I digress….

Here’s my version of a Blueberry Crumble Pie with Shortbread Crust with a few pictures:

Ingredients

Shortbread Crust

1-1/2 C plus 4 Tbsp. All-purpose flour

1 C firmly packed light brown sugar

1/3 Cplus 1 Tbsp granulated sugar

3 tsp. ground cinnamon

16 tbsp (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

5 cups blueberries

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375°F.

Make the shortbread crust and transfer to a 9-inch or 10-inch deep pie dish. Press into the pan. If you have another recipe for a pie crust or a store-bought one, you can use it if its big enough as well.

In a large bowl, mix the 1-1/2 cup flour, 2/3 cup of the brown sugar, the 2/3 cup granulated sugar, and 2 tsp. of the cinnamon. Put the butter pieces on top and toss with a fork or your fingers to coat with the flour mixture. Using your fingertips (or, if you’re fancy, a pastry blender), work the ingredients together until the mixture forms large, coarse crumbs the size of large peas. Set the topping aside.

In another large bowl, combine the 5 cups of blueberries, 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon and 4 Tbsp of the flour. Gently stir to evenly coat the blueberries.

Sprinkle 1 tbsp flour and 1 tbsp granulated sugar over the bottom of the shortbread crust. Pour the filling onto the crust, spreading it evenly.

Sprinkle the topping evenly over the blueberry filling. (You may have extra left, depending on whether you use a 9-inch or 10-inch pie dish. This makes great topping for muffins as well and can be refrigerated for a few days.)

Bake the pie until the crust and topping is golden brown and the blueberry filling just begins to bubble, 45 to 55 minutes.

Serve at room temperature, warm, or cold. Garen and I both like it cold better.

It goes perfectly with ice cream, whipped cream, or cool whip.

Speaking of cool whip…

To add a little more sweetness to our night and go along with the pie theme, we played the Pie Face Showdown. I had forgotten how much fun this is for the kids.

The mess was worth the fun….plus, we did this right before bathtub. Easy as pie! (Pun intended).

I hope everyone’s Saturday (and Sunday) were as sweet as ours!

Disclaimer- I’m not being compensated for any of this content and I’ve not been given these products that I’ve linked too.

My adventure on Noom and my new healthy lifestyle continues. (if I was saying this out loud I would’ve used air quotes around healthy lifestyle) And as I continue to Noom right along, I’m learning how to better use my very limited calories to the ensure I’m satisfied from not only a hunger standpoint but also a craving side as well.

You see, I have a sweet tooth. Actually, I’m pretty sure all but about five of my teeth may be sweet teeth- two for breads and carbs, one for burgers, one for seafood, and one for prime rib. You get the picture though. I need my sweets.

And I don’t mean fresh fruit….although I do enjoy that.

Because of my sweet teeth, I’m always looking for a good way to satisfy them. And I found one that I’m currently obsessed with. I actually plan the rest of my day’s meals around this sweet snack.

Yes, I really think it’s that good. And I’m going to share it with you because, unlike the two toddlers running around my house, I like to share things. So here it goes.

I call it Salted Chocolate Coconut DeLight and it’s only two ingredients:

That’s it. You probably thought as much as I praised this sweet treat that it would be something complicated. Instead it only takes a few minutes to put together. And even less to clean up. That’s a winner in my books.

Plus, I buy these Greek yogurt cups at Sam’s in a box with Lemon Merengue and Strawberry Cheesecake, which are also pretty fantastic. The bark came from Walmart and wasn’t cheap but was worth it.

My Mom always sang us the “Here Comes Peter Cotton Tail” song around this time. And, between her and Grammy, we were sure to have plenty of candy, including Peeps! I honestly don’t think you can have Easter without these sugary, marshmallowy, packages of cuteness.

Yesterday, I needed to make a run for some labels at Dollar Tree and, as I expected, the Easter section sucked me in. Have I ever told you that I’m in love with the Dollar Tree? So many wonderful things only priced at a dollar. I got some extra-fun goodies for Easter baskets so it was a successful trip, especially since I managed to get the labels, which is what I made the trip for.

I also bought some peeps and some gummy carrots. I have been waiting on an opportune time to make “dirt cups” with pudding and some crushed up brownies I had leftover in the freezer for a while. The moment I saw the peeps next to the carrots, I knew it was the perfect time to put these gardens together for the kiddos.

Anna was super excited and helpful with our fun little project. Thank goodness it was an easy one…. although we did have quite a bit of “dirt” on the floor.

We made the chocolate pudding together and processed the brownies. Anna got to scoop the “dirt” (processed brownies crumbs) into the bottom and top of the dishes. Then she got to top the garden off with a gummy carrot and a Peep. You can use processed Oreos too but I needed to use the brownies and they were tastier than the Oreos I’ve used for this in the past.

Anna’s last job was to lick the bowl. I wish I’d taken a picture of her chocolate-covered face because it was adorable and disgusting at the same time!

Even Garen enjoyed them. Ok, maybe not the Peep or the gummy carrot but he quickly ate the rest of it. The smiles and laughs made it all worth the time…and honestly, this was a pretty easy dessert/craft project. That’s the best of both worlds!

Enjoy!!!

This post is all my own opinions. I’m not getting a kick-back from Peeps or Dollar Tree. I just happen to be a satisfied customer.

I’m a little partial but I think she’s the cutest Daisy ever. I mean, really how could you say no to this face?!?

We’ve really had such a fun time and got to enjoy a girls night together on Friday night since the boys and littles went to Hamilton to work on Will’s Pinewood Derby car.

Here’s her sales pitch:

This is her first year to sell cookies and I’m impressed that they have online sales available. If you’d like to buy from Anna, you can click here to have cookies shipped directly to you. How great is that?!?So now I’ve got Girl Scouts cookies in my house. Soooo tempting. Thank goodness I saved a few of my WW weekly points so I could eat quite a few this weekend. Totally worth it!

I actually don’t remember whether I’ve blogged about my new niece or not but she is an absolute doll. I got to see her again last weekend before the Odom family made their way back up North. She was baptized at my parents’ church over the weekend.

Unfortunately, Kate had some disgusting bug causing her to be snotty, feverish, and down-right cranky. Not really what you want to expose a newborn too. So the littles stayed home with Garen and I went to Hamilton to get a few more Harper cuddles in.

I took Garen’s camera and captured a few photos but I’m not nearly as good as Garen. Luckily, the cute baby makes up for it. Combine that with Garen’s amazing photoshopping skills and they turned out ok I think.

Did I mention my Mom made the most AMAZING Chantilly cake. For reals. Soooo hard to only eat one piece!

Tomorrow morning, I’ll officially be a “cookie mom.” You know, the crazy ladies dragging their little girls around selling those addicting little round morsels of joy??? For those of you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m speaking of the ever-popular Girl Scout Cookies.

That’s right, folks. Cookie Season officially kicks off tomorrow.

And, glutten-for-punishment that I am, I will be braving one of the few freezing days here in Texas to go stand in line at the zoo to pick up these boxes of tastiness.

With that said, it will all be worth it when I have 2 cases of Thin Mints in the back of my Expedition. Yummy! Yes, I’ve already calculated the Weight Watchers points.

A couple of weekends back, the kids helped me to make Christmas cookies. We had such a good time, even if my kitchen became a disaster zone and the control freak, perfectionist side of me struggled to let them decorate them however they wanted.

Garen caught a few good photos of us in action. Yes, I was brave enough to let Clara and Kate “help.” Sprinkles. Everywhere.

My Mom and my Grammy would always let us kids help decorate sugar cookies. Besides it being a great memory and fun (yet messy) activity, they actually taste really good. Here’s the recipe that my family uses. This is my Mom’s handwriting. I think. My Grammy wrote almost exactly like it. And it must be genetic because I write almost like it too!

This year I used a new icing recipe thanks to Pinterest. The recipe from In Katrina’s Kitchen was wonderful. It was tasty and hardened up for beautiful cookies just like her blog says it will. I’m not big on Crisco BUT it was good in this recipe. If you don’t use it and substitute with butter, you’ll get a similar effect but it won’t harden as well. If you’re not stacking cookies, that may not be an issue.

I hope each of you will take time to make some sweet memories of your own this holiday season! Tis’ the season to be busy with everything (which is why I’ve not blogged much) but I’m really making an effort to do things with our little (big) family that will create memories that they’ll cherish as well.